Monday, July 06, 2009

Welcome to today's puzzle, the creation of which was awarded to the winner of the first third of the puzzle season. Here it is:

(click image to enlarge)

The object is to connect the squares of the same color. Here are the rules:

Paths may not cross black squares or any other path, including its own (no loops).

Paths may not cross the large black square surrounding the grid.

Paths may not cross squares containing a letter from the name of their color.

Paths may not turn back on themselves. The path between two colored squares may share a side with no more than two squares that are part of the same path. For example:

Hint #1 (9:57am): The longer the name of the color, the more potential routes are blocked by "forbidden letters". It's easier to find the "bottlenecks" where there is only 1 possible path for those colors.

Hint #2 (10:56am): Here's a path to get you started:

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Puzzle Rules: The answer to the puzzle is the name of a current or former Dodger. Comment freely in the thread, but if you have the solution, please don't give it away to everyone in the comments section. Instead, do the following:

Email us with the first and last name of the answer, as well as your reasoning. And please include your screen name somewhere in the email; and

Post a comment simply saying you have emailed your solution attempt. I may not be able to reply to your original email promptly, so please be patient and check back on the comment thread for the latest news; I may confirm correct answers there.

I'm not aware that you can do any sort of editing - drawing colored lines - in Acrobat Reader, can you? It's just for reading. You'd need the full Acrobat, if that. Now that I think about it, there is a Mac application called OmniGraffle that would be perfect for this. But I don't think you could paste the puzzle into it, you'd have to construct it anew. (And I don't have OG.)

UBragg is unstoppable. Mr Customer, as your primary rival, you should have studied UBragg's tendencies over the past several weeks and designed a puzzle specifically engineered to play to his weaknesses.

Well, this would be intersting if I had the time and could figure oit out. I've managed to save the image as PDF and open it in Acrobat Reader, and there are all sorts of interesting things including highlighting that could be done in Commenting Toolbar, but it requires that Document Rights be enabled, and they aren't. No Commenting allowed, and I don't see how/where to turn them on.

Well, this really is the type of puzzle I like. But it's too complicated to do in black and white with a black pencil, I'm sorry. And I do not appear to have the graphics tools or applications to do it on my computer. Actually, I'm sure I must have them, but I'm not familiar with them. In Adobe Reader, I'd need to have the correct document rights for the pdf, which can only be assigned by someone else, it seems. I can't do it in (Mac) Preview application. I've looked in Graphic Converter, and there might be a way there, but I don't know it. I do not have Illustrator or Photoshop. I have something called Photoshop Elements 2 that came with my scanner but it won't open - I think it must be too ancient for my OS.

I don't need a hint. I can see how it works - I like topology. I've even got the basic "shapes" for the really problematic paths worked out - I can see what has to fit around what. I just can't keep track of paths without colors.

If anyone has any other tips for free versions of applications where it's possible to mark up selections of graphics on a Mac, please let me know.

Quad, I did think of Excel. It can't take more than 20 minutes or so to recreate the puzzle there, so I think this is a good route. I think that applying a background or fill color for each cell will be simple and straightforward.

Karina, thanks for all the suggestions! Given the fact that I'd have to learn a new application, plus working with selections in a graphic might be tricky (it could obscure the text), I think I might go the Excel route instead. I'll take a look at those. Preview is no good - I tried already (no editing or applying higghlight colors to selections.) But that was really enterprising and helpful of you - I 'll take a look at those apps in any case.

Paintbrush isn't so simple to *erase*, it turns out. You have to keep backing up by undos, losing everything else you've done in between. I'm sticking with it for now, but may end up doing the Excel route after all, since each cell can be altered individually. I'll get there in the end...

Actually, It was probably easier for me to reverse-engineer this puzzle than to solve it from scratch, since I knew where I was trying to go from the start. I just set the paths where I needed them to be and systematically eliminated the alternate routes.

I really liked this puzzle, Mr. Customer, once I found a way to do the colors. Excel worked best, well worth the trouble of recreating the puzzle there. It's important to be able to try things out and undo them when they don't work. Excel lets you remove the colors of any parts of the path (via individual cells). It also has a "paint" (paste format) tool that makes things easy. In the freeware app I tried earlier (Paintbrush) you could only undo backwards one step at a time - too complicated.

I think it would be best if puzzles could be solved using tools and free applications available, mind you. But this was a great puzzle - very intricate and logical.

You can do anything online for free these days. I solved this with layers in Photoshop but there are free image editors online that have layers too - you don't even have to download anything. Like this:

I actually much prefer pencil and paper, and usually do the puzzles that way. (That's how I was completely stumped on the puzzle that required you to select it - which some people apparently did in order to copy and paste it - to be able to see hidden flashing letters.)

But for this puzzle, I'd have needed 7 colored pencils. I don't have even 2 colored pencils, unfortunately. Missing tools of the puzzle trade, I guess.

It's just that I never knew I'd need a bunch of colored pencils for anything, and don't have any. I'm at home today, so it's something of a bother to go downtown and buy some. I was too busy trying to solve the puzzle and complaining. ;-)

I basically built this puzzle in Excel. I started with a with a layout of the way I wanted the paths to run, but one cell smaller on all four sides. I then took the sentence I wanted to hide and put each successive letter in a location where it couldn't be crossed by adjacent paths, adding black squares as necessary, and shifting each path over to accommodate the displaced square.

Once that was set, I made 8 new worksheets (1 for the solution, 1 for each color). I linked the contents of the cells to the solution sheet, then set autoformating to gray out the appropriate uncrossable letters on each sheet.

I then added a few letters (i.e. YWL under the top yellow square) to get the paths going in the right direction. I extended each path (on the solution worksheet) as far as it was constrained by letters or other paths. I then filled in additional blocking letters until the each line was committed to a single route.

At that point, I probably had about 1/3 of the grid filled. The remaining squares were then filled with "neutral" letters.

I hope that makes sense! I'm probably glossed over something along the way, but that's the gist of it.